Joy

JOY is a casual, neighborhood eatery in Highland Park, Los Angeles. Our menu showcases regional Taiwanese cooking using fresh and simple ingredients. We love sharing our heritage through food and aim to provide distinctive service for our guests and community.

Our food is inspired by Taiwan’s street food culture. The menu features dishes you can find in night markets around Taipei such as minced pork on rice and thousand-layer pancake. We also offer limited, seasonal cold appetizers, soups, and greens. Our wide selection of tea drinks, along with a rotating list of craft beers and wines, is curated to complement our food offerings. Similar to our sister restaurant, Pine & Crane, some of our dishes also trace their roots to the northern-style Chinese dishes my maternal grandparents grew up eating before they moved to Taiwan in 1949. As a result, a lot of our dishes feature wheat based items such as buns, pancakes, dumplings, and noodles. Our scallion sesame bread, which we bake in-house daily and accompanies our soups, has always been one of my grandfather’s favorite things to eat and is one such example.

Our hope is to be a cozy, neighborhood joint where people from all walks of life gather together and bond over delicious, heartful, and authentic Taiwanese specialities.  True to the spirit of street food dining, we want guests to feel equally at ease whether they’re stopping in for a small snack and to say hello, or if they’re meeting friends to enjoy a communal dining experience.

As a casual counter-service spot, we don’t take any reservations but please feel free to call us prior to visiting so we can help estimate your wait time (if there is one).

Thank you and we hope to serve you soon!